June 1 is start of hurricane season, the beginning of summer for many people here in the US, and also the start of my term as International Volunteer at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. So I left the luxury of my Kona hotel early and did the 2.5 hours drive up to Volcano with a view sightseeing stops in between.

I was warmly greeted at the park and could drop my luggage in the Interpreter’s house with no problem, but then had to hang out for 6 hours at Hilo Airport to wait for Dave, another volunteer who has served already 11’000 hours in the NPS. He would pick me and two others up. Rephrase, one other, because there was a bit of confusion with the pick up dates and who would be coming when. So the other volunteer from Moldova and me were taken to Safeways for shopping and then back up to the house to get settled in. So we are slowly discovering how everything works and will be visiting the park’s main center today for the first real time to meet the other colleagues and tag along a little bit.